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I wanted to hold a discussion (or show and tell, if you will) of our dangerous experiences in life. By this I mean self defense, assaults, dangerous situations, disputes, bullying, abuse, or anything of violent nature that you yourself did not ask for, but is being forced upon you by the will of another. What did you do in response to the aggression, how well did it work, and what did you learn from the experience?

I'll start, and this is gonna be long, so if you don't like wall-o-text, best turn away now.

You see, I've always wanted to train seriously as a martial artist. However, unlike many kids back then who just want to look cool or can kick serious ass, I wanted to train dilligently. Many of those kids try out things like karate or taekwando for like 1-2 month, and give up because they aren't motivated enough, and don't want to pay their dues for the ability to fight well.

I on the other hand, thought that it's not being able to kick ass that's cool, but rather the tough training, guided by a wise master, allows an ordinary person to become extraordinary through hard work and preserverence. Further more, the martial artist can then take a stand against injustice, and not allow others to dictate his life as they wish. That sense of confidence, determination, and independence was what I had wanted, even as a child.

However, I wasn't atheletic at all, and was discouraged doing sports by peers who didn't want me on their team, or teachers who didn't think highly of the slow and pudgy me. So I thought I was a hopelessly talentless person that couldn't trained by any master, and gave up that dream to being strong as being "not possible for me."

Then, all of the sudden, I was told at the last minute that I am immigrating to Canada from my small southern city in China. Shocking as it may, I was being a good sport and said "no problem." Thinking back, I want to kick my tiny self in the rear for being so damn naive. It wasn't gonna be that easy...

Elementary school. Classmates seem ok, even though I understood nothing they said. Ok, why are they taking my stuff and chucking it back and forth? Why won't they give it back? OUCH, why did he punch me? Why isn't the teacher doing anything? I didn't do anything to annoy them! Hell, I can't speak a word of english! OW, stop that! Hey, give that back! What are you saying, I can't understand you! GAH, my kidney...

That about sums up my memory of first week of school. I told pops friday evening that I wanted to go home. He laughed at me and said, "you are home, now go do your homework." Ok, no help from pops, check. Mom, I'm being beaten by my classmates for no reason! What should I do? "Oh just ignore them baby, they'll get bored of it soon enough" Ok, I'll try that.

Spitballs, my pen stolen, can't find my water bottle, lunch in the garbage for some reason, my notebook drawn in, chair pulled out from under me as I sat, tripped while walking past desk. Why isn't the teacher doing anything??? She's right there and I know she can see me! Hey teach, a little help? "Stop teasing him boys." She says. Stop teasing??? I don't think this is teasing anymore...

This went on for about... a year or so. Getting progressively worse as my english gets progressively better. OK, now I understand they're calling me a fatass, or a faggot. I can't tell which is which. OW, damnit not my teeth! It's falling off! OK asshole, you asked for it! Just scaring them a bit should work right?

Cited for aggrevated assault with a weapon. (reads as: holding a scissor and running forward, no stabbing involved)

Lesson One: aggression right back doesn't work in public eye.
Solution: Don't fight back in public

Doh. What now? Can't fight back, so get ass kicked repeatedly in school. One day, the jerk squad comes up to me, and says "let's take this outside, you, me after school." I thought, awesome, maybe I can settle things so that they'll stop bothering me. Led me to a forested area near school, gang leader clothlines me from behind just as we got there, sits down on my back, and proceed to beat the living shit of out of me. I look back and guess what? Everybody was kicking me and throwing grass on me. This wasn't a duel, this was a gang beatdown!

Ok, so I'll just avoid them. Should be ok. Going home perfectly safe, must be a record. Hey wait a mo, I feel eyes on me...looks back over my shoulder - OMH HOLY $#@% how many of them are there?!? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - ... is that skateboard in his hand? Why is he walking with it and... SHIT FIND SAFE ZONE. Goes and fake ringing door bell of the closes house to me. Look at street, phew all clear.

Lesson Three: When in doubt, seek help, even if bluffing, better than nothing.
Success!

Feeling good about myself, they shouldn't be trying that again. Go home - BLARG ouch... bastards were waiting for me... I'm being jumped aren't I? Oh my, that skateboard again... BAM

Darkness.

Out for 30 minutes until passing car stopped. RCMP showed up, talked to them, didn't get in much trouble, the jerks. I got yelled by the folks for causing trouble. Being called into school by the principle is very embarressing. Dad told me "why didn't you fight back?" Great advice pop...

Lesson Four: never assume you are safe, EVER. Things change in a flash.
Solution: mounties to the rescue!

Peace lasted for approximately... 4 days. Continue as before until graduation. No major ass kicking tho, just small ones everyday. Mounties must be effective!

High School, jerks likes pick on me, so I became invisible. No one see me, I don't get hurt! No social life or popularity to speak of, no girlfriends ever, sucky grades... Kk this sucks. Why am I so pathetic? Holding myself back just because of fear? I'm a bloody coward...

You pretty much described my childhood except add to it a schizophrenic alcoholic step dad and multiple dirty old men. I ended the school bullying it by taking a 2x4 to someones backside in shop class hard enough to leave a big bruise and moving far far away from my family as soon as I graduated.

Aikido has been a great help in getting rid of a whole lot of bottled up anger among other things.

I used to beat people up for picking on other people. Got tired of feeling bad for hurting folks. Then I found aikido so now I could stop the bullies without hurting them because I didn't know any other way. Sure, folks still get hurt but I don't feel so bad about it ... still got stuff to work on.

"In my opinion, the time of spreading aikido to the world is finished; now we have to focus on quality." Yamada Yoshimitsu

One of the reasons we homeschool our children is to avoid this type of baloney.

In the child/school world, if a classmate takes my lunch money - its called "bullying" and I'm told that it was my fault somehow. In the adult world, if a coworker takes my lunch money - its called Robbery - a FELONY punishable by YEARS in prison and no one says the victim had it coming. Just sayin'.

All paths lead to death. I strongly recommend taking one of the scenic routes.
AWA - Nidan - Started Aikido training in 2008

One of the reasons we homeschool our children is to avoid this type of baloney.

In the child/school world, if a classmate takes my lunch money - its called "bullying" and I'm told that it was my fault somehow. In the adult world, if a coworker takes my lunch money - its called Robbery - a FELONY punishable by YEARS in prison and no one says the victim had it coming. Just sayin'.

I find the current situation with bullying in schools confusing, to be honest. I'm of the opinion that having social friction is good for future socialization. Your coworkers probably won't take your lunch money, but in the adult world most people will run into coworkers and bosses that are just as nasty as that bully in school.

When I was in junior high, I had a girl threaten me a few times. This was more than a bit concerting since the last fight this particular girl had been in, she picked up another student by the throat and punched her in the face into a locker. Repeatedly. At the time I had been in karate for over a year, and a good friend of mine had been taking Tang Soo Do for about the same amount of time. She and I pondered it, and came up with some realizations. I just wasn't experienced enough in karate to really defend myself. A teacher wasn't going to interfere unless we said something and begged for protection. Teachers physically can't be everywhere at once, and we knew that if we tried that, when the girl finally got a chance, I'd be in substantially worse shape. So we figured if everyone in school thought I would be likely to win a fight, they would leave me alone. We had an impromptu sparring match in the hallway next to a teacher we were pretty sure would break it up quickly. Neither of us were terribly adept at pulling punches, so I wound up with a black eye, and she was the recipient of a split lip and an equally black eye.

The girl never said a word to me after that, nor did anyone else. That particular incident taught me something though. It gave me confidence that out thinking someone was better than out fighting them, as well as substantially safer. It also taught me a good bit of how to utilize resources and work out solutions on my own, instead of being told to do something by an adult. I'm not saying that kids should be beaten up in school regularly, but I do think that learning how to deal with many different kinds of people is a good thing in the long run.

Well, like a lot of people here, I was bullied a bit at school, but it never resulted in much physical damage, so I guess I was lucky compared to Alic et al.

I think the most dangerous situation I have been in was when I was serving beer at a summer festival. On my first day, a guy came up and ordered 5 beers. I took the caps off, took his money and gave him his change. Then his friends walked up and he turned around and realised that he only had 3 friends so he asked for a refund on one of his beers. Now, if I had seen his friends when he ordered, I would have refused them service because they were pretty drunk. Anyway, I wasn't allowed to give him a refund since the bottle was open and the transaction was complete, and he accepted that. His friend wouldn't let it go though. He let rip with a bunch of expletives and macho challenging bulls##t. "I'll bash the c##p out of you, you f##king f##ot" "you're dead, you hear me?" That sort of stuff. Anyway, I followed protocol in these situations and said "I will just call my manager who will be able to help you". My coworker ran to the other end of the hall to grab the manager while I stayed behind the counter. He was fixated on me, so my coworker was pretty safe, and if I had left, it would have given him a clean shot. I then continued to serve customers while he was hurling insults at me. My manager got there after a while, and repeated what I had already said. He was just about to send for his manager when the security guards started to converge on us. The guy's friend saw the danger at this point and pulled him away. About 20 minutes later, he was dragged past my counter in handcuffs by the police, still hurling insults at me.

I'm sure a lot of people have been in this situation, but if I had risen to his bait at all he would have been on me in an instant. By not giving him an excuse to come at me, nobody got hurt (he didn't get charged). If I had responded, I may have been able to deal with him, but I was only 2kyu at the time, and he was about twice my size, so I don't really like my chances.

there are lots of situations about which I still don't know if they were really dangerous or not, but they were all stupidly self-inflicted, such as trying out the physical limits of a sailplane (when I was sixteen) or getting carried away by the police after a bar fight in my first week in N'Djaména (when I was twenty-three) or giving birth to triplets in some forlorn place in South Ecuador (when I was thirty-three) or getting stung by a used syringe full of dried blood doing waste analysis on Baku landfill (last year)...however, none of these really made me afraid, and certainly none would have been solvable by aikido

I was several times scared shitless in airplanes, when they had problems to land due to thunderstorm (once over Ankara; the plane was 300 m or so above ground, the thunderstorm was over the airport, and the plane was flying circles around a big, black cloud that went down to the ground, passengers praying and hoping the cloud would go away before fuel was finished) or to technical problems. I was terribly afraid during the 1999 earthquake in Turkey, when we hurried out of the house thinking it might collapse over us, seeking shelter from downfalling bricks under the portail of the French consulate and being sadly disappointed that no one had the glorious idea to let us into their completely earthquake-safe park...and I am still very afraid that another, bigger earthquake shall strike Istanbul soon.

Another situation that was in my opinion horribly dangerous was when I tried to get out of a province train in Germany at a deserted station, at 02.30 in the morning, two kids are sleeping in the chariot, two others already got out of the train, when the doors close, squeeze me and the chariot back, train starts going, me with two kids inside and two kids running desperately to catch the accelerating train and get in again. I forced the door open and jumped out of the train, being afraid that the two kids outside might fall under the train or whatever, leaving two crying girls behind the closing door. Luckily some other nightowl passenger was cleverer than I was and just pulled the emergency brake.

Still no aikido involved.
Three or four years ago, I took the last subway here in Brussels; the wagon was completely empty and I sat there quietly reading DER SPIEGEL, until a group of drunk male young German tourists came in, singing awful sexist songs and hollering drunkenly around. The see me, being visibly German with my German newspaper and a woman, so an ideal target, they circle around me and start singing things like "Women are an object to share, open your trousers, come on let's switch..." (in German, this thing rhymed, even if the rhymes were very bad), they were fourteen and I was alone. So again no aikido involved. I just continued reading my SPIEGEL and ignoring them completely, because what else could I have done against fourteen drunken thugs? After six or seven stops and an endless journey, luckily they got out.

So all in all, there have been some dangerous situations in my life, luckily no bullying in childhood, luckily none ever took a bad turn (not my merit, sheer luck), but certainly none where I could have used aikido.

Nevertheless, even if this is completely illogical, doing aikido still provides a feeling of being less vulnerable. And moreover, it is a source of happiness.

This looks like the most dangerous situation in your long list of mostly non-dangerous situations ;

Quote:

Alic Xie wrote:

...Cited for aggrevated assault with a weapon. (reads as: holding a scissor and running forward, no stabbing involved)

If one schoolchild attacks another with a pair of scissor I'd hope that child would be at the very least reprimanded and watched like a hawk from that day on. Suspension or expelling would be the next step.
I know we're all supposed to take your side as a victim ... but sorry, not this time. Not from me.
Any time I've been furious with other kids at scholl I did not attack them with a sharp weapon, I'm not a psycho.

My dangerous situations ;
Attempting to rescue the occupants of a burning car on a local bridge : car was empty! I avoided the flash fire upon opening the door, axe in hand. Everyone was fine ... I'd do exactly the same thing again, too.

Attacked by three 'yard dogs' in Moscow, hitting them with the end of a longbow and shouting sent them packing ... but I was ready to escalate with something in my pocket. Danger averted, some frayed hemlines, nothing worse.

I have never stolen lunch money or had it stolen, nor would I consider it a dangerous situation.

Well Michael, that's why we learn and grow right? I never was in a situation that agitating before, since I lived a pretty sheltered life up until that point. I was already naive for a ten year old, so it was baaaaad. I didn't know what punch was until it hit me, and they had like 8 people, with the ringleader this Indian kid. They're all bigger and fitter than I am and knew how to fight. I was a noob and a bit dumb. I didn't know what to do and was totally scared, so I thought I could scare em off if I showed some force. I never intented on stabbing them at all, and simply just held the scissors in my hands.

Now if I was 14 and I did that it would be perfectly fine to yell at me for being a moron. But again, I learned right after that day that it was no good to respond with force, real or bluff.

I find the current situation with bullying in schools confusing, to be honest. I'm of the opinion that having social friction is good for future socialization. Your coworkers probably won't take your lunch money, but in the adult world most people will run into coworkers and bosses that are just as nasty as that bully in school.

When I was in junior high, I had a girl threaten me a few times. This was more than a bit concerting since the last fight this particular girl had been in, she picked up another student by the throat and punched her in the face into a locker. Repeatedly. At the time I had been in karate for over a year, and a good friend of mine had been taking Tang Soo Do for about the same amount of time. She and I pondered it, and came up with some realizations. I just wasn't experienced enough in karate to really defend myself. A teacher wasn't going to interfere unless we said something and begged for protection. Teachers physically can't be everywhere at once, and we knew that if we tried that, when the girl finally got a chance, I'd be in substantially worse shape. So we figured if everyone in school thought I would be likely to win a fight, they would leave me alone. We had an impromptu sparring match in the hallway next to a teacher we were pretty sure would break it up quickly. Neither of us were terribly adept at pulling punches, so I wound up with a black eye, and she was the recipient of a split lip and an equally black eye.

The girl never said a word to me after that, nor did anyone else. That particular incident taught me something though. It gave me confidence that out thinking someone was better than out fighting them, as well as substantially safer. It also taught me a good bit of how to utilize resources and work out solutions on my own, instead of being told to do something by an adult. I'm not saying that kids should be beaten up in school regularly, but I do think that learning how to deal with many different kinds of people is a good thing in the long run.

Mary I was delivering it to a customer in Moscow, through darkened streets past factories and under the railway line. Otradnoe to ... some district with a hyphen. I didn't have arrows with me. Shame eh?

Quote:

Alic Xie wrote:

But again, I learned right after that day that it was no good to respond with force, real or bluff.

Michael, I don't understand. It's bad that I learned that violence and aggression doesn't work for self defense? What should I have learned from that experience then? That I should make sure to stab the guy next time?

Forgive me for saying this, but I can practically feel your eyes judging me from way over yonder. I don't understand what you want from me, should I say that I belong in an institution? Or is jail better for a monster like me? Or perhaps you feel like a sociopath like me doesn't deserve to learn Aikido?

I was 10 years old, knew not a word of English, had no friends here, never seen a foreigner before, and the first experience I have of them is that they are violent without reason. I didn't even talk to the guy before he started to attack me physically, and I only realized way down the line that he was also verbally provoking me. I was still very much naive and competitive back then, so my first thought was "I don't understand his words, but I understand his actions, gotta think of a defense NOW!"

More than 10 years later, I understand now that he wanted to get a rise from me. I still don't know, even now, what he lacked that he thought he could've gotten from me, but whatever that thing was, he didn't get it from me, since he never seemed to be satisfied. I felt that he was always trying to provoke me in a certain way, looking something he wanted, to feed a desire within himself.

Are you feeling the same? Perhaps by belittling me, you can also gain something that you feel you don't have right now? I don't know what it is that you want me to say or do, but will that give you relief?

I think it's really risky Demetrio, I wouldn't have been able to pull it off. That kind of action takes brass balls and nerves of steel. I'm no army vet, and there's no way I could handle weapons at my level. Plus, even if I did have the ability, it is far too risky without any immediate need for doing it. I wouldn't done anything unless that person were to try and do something to me or someone there.

Now, I won't say anything bad about this soldier. Obviously he was confident in his abilities, had enough experience, and felt the need to hold true to his words and believes. He must've felt that it was worth it to risk his life doing this. He could've failed and died and still be a hero. That he succeeded is just that much sweeter for everyone.

It all comes down to accurate judgment of yourself, and others. If you think you got the ability to do it, and enough experience to know what to expect, then it all comes down to the question of "do I need to do this, or do I want to?"

He was lucky his children would not have to go to his funeral both being an active soldier on duty and putting his life on the line like that.. brave but also selfish and stupid.
On one hand protecting the foundation of his society and at the same time gambling with his responsability as a father towards his family..
Makes me think.. hmm.. I think O´sensei had a very good point.. but that is taking it to the extremes I feel.. maybe..

But again, I learned right after that day that it was no good to respond with force, real or bluff.

No. It is right to respond with force.

Quote:

Alic Xie wrote:

Michael, I don't understand. It's bad that I learned that violence and aggression doesn't work for self defense? What should I have learned from that experience then? That I should make sure to stab the guy next time?

You want to stab someone? In what situation?

Quote:

Alic Xie wrote:

Forgive me for saying this, but I can practically feel your eyes judging me from way over yonder. I don't understand what you want from me, should I say that I belong in an institution? Or is jail better for a monster like me? Or perhaps you feel like a sociopath like me doesn't deserve to learn Aikido?

I won't forgive you, you are putting forward a ridiculous and insulting attitude. You have no right to make personal insults about your imaginings of my thoughts. Stop it.

Quote:

Alic Xie wrote:

Are you feeling the same? Perhaps by belittling me, you can also gain something that you feel you don't have right now? I don't know what it is that you want me to say or do, but will that give you relief?

Here you are, calling me the bully. You can imagine what I would say right to your face if this wasn't a heavily moderated forum?!

I made two points only ;
1. Child attacking others with scissors = potentially dangerous, should be reprimanded/expelled.
2. Your assertion that resisting with force is wrong, I absolutely DISagree.

(Sigh)...Damned if you do, damned if you don't huh... Well that's fine, you can have whatever opinion you like Michael, that's your take on it.

I'm more interested in how others have taken on situations that are dangerous to them, and what they've learned from them. In my case, it was a perpetual series of loses on my part, though I'm not certain if there can even be a "winner" in that kind of circumstances. However, thanks to those experiences, I did learn good life lessons that have helped me through my later life.

This one is a more recent escapade, after I've started training in Aikido.

I was walking home from a late night house party during new years eve. Walking down the main road, I passed by a house that was quite rowdy, even for new years eve standards. All that flashing light and music made my gaze linger on the house longer than normal. This attracted the attention of a few of the guys that were sitting on the front steps of the door. I didn't notice they were there until they got up and start to come towards me. What got my attention was that there were four of them, and they walked close together, all looking at me and talking quietly to each other. It wasn't long before I realized that they were stumbling a bit.

Right then, I realized that with the neighbourhood as quite as it was, and them as buzzed as they were, it was likely that whatever they wanted with me, it wasn't going to be enjoyable. I'm not much of a runner, and even drunk guys could probably catch me, so I liked to not be out of breath when having to defend myself. That made me decide that I should just walk quicker and and not appear nervous, but keeping awareness of what they were doing, in case I had to quickly take up stance or bolt for it. They called out to me (hey, you, hey~) but I ignored them and continued on. They followed me for a short while, but since I've already put some distance between us, they must've thought that it's just easier to return to the party. I looked back and they were walking back towards the party. At that point, I let out a breath I didn't know I had held, and relaxed my whole tensed up body, totally glad that they found girls and alcohol to be more interesting than my blood.

I feel that in this case, I was a winner since I had been non-confrontational, and as a result, escaped harm. I believe that I kept good zanshin while still maintaining a nonagressive atmosphere, and as a result, was safe whilst defusing the situation.